James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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Dinotopia: The World Beneath

"A ravishing, action-packed adventure." —Smithsonian. Now with 32 extra behind-the-scenes pages. Signed by the author/illustrator

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara

160 pages, fully illustrated in color. Written and illustrated by James Gurney. Signed by the author

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I'd like to take a little break from the ongoing series to announce that the Dinotopia website has been completely rebuilt from the foundation up.

The new site has much easier navigation; updated news, FAQ, and exhibition information; extensive image galleries (scroll through each gallery using arrow keys); a store that uses Paypal; and a fun trivia button on top of the "About" page.

If you keep hitting the trivia button, you get random tidbits from the Dinotopia universe.

What I like most about the new site is that I can update it. Without having any programming knowledge, I can add news headlines, trivia items, store stuff, and exhibition info. It's as easy as blogging.

The architect and builder is my son, Dan Gurney. When he’s not playing an accordion, he designs artists' websites and manages his own business start-up called Concert Window.

Here’s how he describes the thinking behind the redesign:

“In approaching the new Dinotopia.com website, I was dealing with a large property with a significant amount of information to convey. The challenge was to simplify the navigation scheme and provide a clear, uncluttered experience for the visitor, while still keeping most of the content intact. Moreover, in today's Internet, a website must be optimized for all screen sizes. I wanted the new Dinotopia.com to work equally well on a desktop, laptop, and tablet.

"So I created a dynamic site built on a Wordpress foundation, with JQuery/Ajax powering the animations between sections. That means no more reloading the entire page when switching to a new section. With such a visual property, I used a large background image to place the visitor immediately in the Dinotopia environment.

"I situated the main navigation bar on the bottom of the screen, which mimics the arrangement of a native iPad app. It's fixed so it always stays in the same location -- that makes it easier to orient yourself, no matter how far through the content you've scrolled.

"I also created a complete admin backend, so James can update the site content whenever he wants -- news, trivia, shop items, etc. It was a fun site to work on and I hope everyone enjoys it.”